I'm the founding partner of Proteus International, and author of Growing Great Employees, Being Strategic, and Leading So People Will Follow. You can follow me on Twitter @erikaandersen. My websites are erikaandersen.com, and www.proteus-international.com. I'm insatiably curious. I love figuring out how people, situations and objects work, and how they could work better: faster, smarter, deeper, with greater satisfaction, more affection, and a higher fun quotient.

Just In It For the Money? That May Not Work.

I often enjoy Steve Denning’s posts – he’s both a fellow Forbes blogger and a fellow Cave Henricks/Shelton Interactive client, but even more important, I like the way he thinks, and I almost always find great stuff in his writing that spurs my own thinking.

Just last week, I was working with a digital media company, helping them create vision and strategy to support their continued growth. At one point, we were deciding on their mission, their purpose. They had developed a mission statement a few years ago, but no one remembered it – it was, as mission statements often are, both too complex and too generic. So they decided to change it. As we started talking, one person said, “Our mission is to make money.” It stopped the conversation cold. (I’ve noticed that when people say this, others often hesitate to disagree – I suspect they don’t want to sound ‘soft.’)

I questioned that belief, offering the famous Jack Welch quote that focusing only on profit is a “dumb idea,” and suggesting that executives look

courtesy of Pakhnyushcha

instead to creating value for customers. We then had a great discussion that ended with the group creating a simple, clear statement of purpose, focused on what they intend to provide their customers.

This is common – generally in these kinds of discussions, at least one person will say something to the effect of, “we’re just here to make money.” I’ve always felt this was both limited and limiting; I’ve observed that for most people, focusing only on making money just isn’t very motivating.

And this is where it comes back to Steve. I just read a wonderful post of his, where he talks about the evolutionary imperative of collaboration. His post is based on another work, a book called The Social Conquest of Earth, by Edward O. Wilson, which draws on a wide variety of scientific work to show that certain species have “advanced social lives, or what biologists call “eusociality”—bees, ants, termites and human beings. These species have been extraordinarily successful and are extremely rare.” In other words, he argues that collaboration is wired-in; a biological imperative that helps insure our survival.

This has further implications: that our impulse toward the group is actually a more effective survival mechanism than our more individualistic and selfish impulses. The impulse to make money is primarily an individualistic motivation, and tends not to drive best utilization of everyone’s strengths. In Denning’s words:

a team driven by money for its members—extrinsic motivation—is less likely to be innovative. Money creates tunnel vision. In today’s marketplace where innovation has become central, we would expect organizations with an internal culture of competition to be generally less agile and innovative and also less likely to prevail over time.

I’ve definitely seen this to be true. Most people seem much more inspired by the idea of working with others to serve customers or to create a truly great product or service than by the pure idea of making buckets of cash. And those I’ve known who are purely money-motivated tend to be, to Denning’s point, more selfish and more focused on expediency than on excellence or innovation.

One of the best leaders I know, Bonnie Hammer, has two basic implicit rules for her team: support each other, and get great results. If people don’t support their team members, they don’t last long on her team, even if they get results. I’m convinced that her focus on collaboration helps drive great results; perhaps the science that Denning references is a good explanation for it.

What do you folks think? Is making money a sufficient and useful motivation, or do most people require something more?

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Agree that intrinsic motivation is more likely to lead to high performance over the long term (and Kovach, I believe, would support this). Nevertheless, extrinsic factors cannot be discounted. Freud posited (in a thought-provoking albeit now much-maligned discourse) fundamental conflict between our individual instinctual drives and the beneficial tempering effects of civilisation (cf. ‘Civilisation and Its Discontents’). Working for the good of the group can clearly bring about positive organisational outcomes. However, one must also be respectful of individual needs, desires and aspirations. For many in the early to mid stages of a career these can be motivated by money and other extrinsic factors. And, where such needs are not met, they can get in the way of full commitment to collective priorities. Managers need to develop reward structures that reflect the individual concerns of their team members.

What do you folks think? Is making money a sufficient and useful motivation, or do most people require something more?

In my opinion money isn’t a sufficient nor useful motivation. Money in itself seems to build more quickly when it isn’t the main focus. The top billionaires listed on Forbes didn’t get to that point because they just wanted money. They had a passion and a dream. This dream reacted with multiple people and this created bonds. Money should always be a factor in business but never the main or second in priority. When love for your work is substituted for the love of money nothing great can occur from this.

I agree – and I really like your sentence “Money in itself seems to build more quickly when it isn’t the main focus.” I don’t know if that’s always true (I’ve certainly known of people who focused purely on building wealth, and who were exceedingly successful in doing so), but in general, the folks I know who are very wealthy got there by pursing something else about which they were passionate.

The vast majority aren’t going to become billionaires. Focusing on billionaires doesn’t give a clue regarding how the average low wage worker thinks. Don’t kid yourselves your high effort low wage worker is there just for the money.

You’re right, there’s always a person that when asked ‘why are you doing this’, will reply ‘I’m doing this to make money’. I find that usually, these people either don’t know how to express what they are really trying to do (make their software product number 1 for Australian developers), or are just tossing out answers because they can’t be bothered to think about them. In both cases (just as happened with yours), talking with them and the others in the room helps get to the real reason behind the ‘make loads of money’ statement. And when they understand why they are in it, then the fun really begins :)

Great article, very thought-provoking. I find that when I’m passionate about something (for reasons other than money), I can think more creatively about it. Then I’m better and faster with problem-solving.

making money is the RESULT of solving problems for others. it is your reward for doing something they could not do themselves.

it is not enough of a motivating force. if you try to make money and you fail, you’ll conclude that it doesn’t work and you’ll quit.

a mission is a motivational force that keeps you moving forward toward your goal, no matter how many times you have experienced a setback. you never quit because the reasons behind the mission are very powerful to you.

if you think your mission is to make money, go buy a copy machine and start printing dollar bills. <– you can use that quote in your coaching session, lol.